


through the endless desert (I will walk)

by Myrime



Category: Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Afghanistan, Aftermath of Torture, Delirium, Don't copy to another site, Family, Fear, Gen, Hurt Tony, Insanity, PTSD, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Rescue, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 20:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20880104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrime/pseuds/Myrime
Summary: You can take a man out of the desert, but you cannot take the desert out of the man.When Tony is rescued out of the hell that is the desert in Afghanistan, he feels like he has already lost his mind.





	through the endless desert (I will walk)

**Author's Note:**

> For the [Whumptober 2019](https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com/) Day 3: Delirium

Getting out of the desert is only half of the miracle. Tony feels the sun burn his skin even long after he has been carried by Rhodey into the helicopter. Just like his lungs still feel like they are full of water, even though it has been days since someone last tried to drown him.

Rhodey is always at his side and yet Tony feels like he is travelling with a ghost. Yinsen is always looking over Rhodey’s shoulder at him. Sometimes he is aloof and silent like he was during those first days in the cave. Sometimes he is blood-flecked and at peace, ready to go home. Usually, he is just whispering into Tony’s ear. _Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life._ Tony would like to ask Rhodey how he is supposed to do that, but he is afraid the answer will be _too late._

A medic waits for them in the helicopter, but Tony turns wild at the mere thought of being touched.

“Tones,” Rhodey tries to soothe him. “We’re just trying to help. You’re wounded.”

Tony’s entire body is a wound. He is a disease, spreading sickness everywhere he goes. Truly, a Merchant of Death.

People have touched him all his life without permission, without good intention. Never has there been less pretence than during the last months, though. In a way, torture might still be the kinder approach than lying about Tony’s worth, than luring Tony in with kind words, with practised seduction, just to get to his money or the products of his mind.

There, he has found a redeeming fact for the Ten Rings. He starts laughing. It is an unhinged sound, animalistic, tinged with the kind of hysteria that one adopts when knowing one will die without ever seeing the sun again.

Distantly, he notices the men and women in front of him sharing glances, making their judgement of him. Tony Stark has finally snapped. Years of drugs and delusion did not manage to do that, but a short vacation in the desert has left him undone.

“Tony,” Rhodey tries again. His face is still soft, but even he shows the strain of knowing he went out to rescue a man but brought back a ruin.

Tony’s laugh cuts off as abruptly as it burst out of him. He lets himself fall onto a seat, and says, “No touching.” His voice is hoarse, nothing more than a rasp, really.

“We need to have a look at you,” Rhodey tries, and Tony cannot even be sure anymore whether he means well.

“No touching,” Tony roars. It echoes, even over the whirring of the rotor blades.

Their eyes alone feel like hands all over his body, tearing him apart, punching new scars into his skin. If he lets them close, they will steal his heart. What little there is left of it. What little he ever had.

“All right,” Rhodey tries to soothe him. “No touching.”

Tony tries to be relieved, but Rhodey is coming closer and Tony’s body is flinching away from him. He is curling up on himself, tries to make himself a smaller target, even though that means he will not be able to see them as well anymore.

His heart is the most important thing. How will he be able to stop wasting his life without it?

“Let me get you something to drink,” Rhodey says, but Tony does not look at him.

He stares at his hands, silently yells at them not to let go of the battery. Electrocution might be a better way to go than drowning, but he is not supposed to give up that easily. The water is waiting, dark and menacing before him, ready to pull him down into his embrace. Rhodey should know better than to push him in. Rhodey should not be here at all. It is not safe. Tony is not safe.

When he scrapes at his chest, there is no battery. His heart has a better cage now, salvaged from his weapons. Perhaps Tony is not beyond hope too.

Rhodey appears back in his line of vision, making Tony recoil, but there is nowhere to go. He digs his fingers into the arc reactor’s casing and blinks until the picture in front of him clears up. A bottle is held before him, steady in a way Tony’s hands never are these days. Rhodey should not look this old.

Tony takes the bottle and stares at it, wonders how they are going to fit his face in there, wonders whether his lungs are not used to more water than that. Perhaps he will be able to breathe right through it. Right up until the end he has never given up hope for that. All life came from water a few millennia ago. Why should he not be able to return there?

“I’ll open it for you,” Rhodey says, still in that calm tone. He has not yelled once at Tony yet. Tony is not sure he understands any other language anymore.

The water burns on his lips when Tony finally moves the bottle to them. It burns down his throat, more than his father’s scotch ever did. It burns in his chest and then it burns in his stomach. It never reaches his lungs. Tony’s breathing gets harder anyway.

“Don’t get used to it,” Yinsen cautions. He, too, is eyeing the bottle with worry. “You won’t be able to drink all of it.”

“Have you seen me try?” Tony asks, pulling his lips into a dead man’s grin.

“Yes,” Yinsen replies with sorrow in his voice. “You’ve drowned a dozen times.”

It feels like it has been more than a dozen. But Yinsen has never been there in the beginning. He only ever picked up the wreckage afterwards.

“I’ll keep the battery safe,” Tony promises him solemnly, curling up further as if that has ever stopped them from tearing him apart.

“Who are you talking to?” Rhodey asks. His expression is pinched.

It worries Tony because Yinsen is right there, almost bumping shoulders with Rhodey. Their trust in Tony is somewhat similar. Both believe that he can be better than he is, more than just a Stark.

“He gave me my battery,” Tony offers. That should clear things up.

Rhodey gave Tony a home, a hundred years ago at MIT. A nickname. A safe place to be himself. Yinsen gave Tony his heart back. A way out. Hope where there was none.

“What battery?” Rhodey keeps asking as if the battery is not throwing sparks between them, as if the hole in Tony’s chest has not been filled with tech. The way it was always supposed to be because Tony built everything he did not have. “We should really have a look at your wounds.”

“No,” Tony shrieks, pressing himself against the wall as if he could phase through it. “No touching.”

The bottle shakes in his hands, spills a few drops right on his hands. The water burns on his skin too, and Tony half expects it to expose his bones underneath, melting his flesh like the sun does. He had wanted to see the sun one last time. He did not think it would aim to destroy him too.

“All right, Tones,” Rhodey says, his voice low and calm, a gentle monotone pulling Tony in. “No touching, I promise. Do you think you could drink a little bit more for me?”

There is no holding the water at bay. Tony has tried. He has attempted to calculate how much he would have to swallow, and how quickly, to keep himself from drowning. He always blackened out before he could find a solution. How is he supposed to work like that? How is he supposed to save Yinsen like that?

Tony has never done well with orders, but he has heard little else for months. Rhodey’s voice is gentle, too. It does not belong here, wanders aimlessly through the broken corridors of Tony’s mind.

He raises the bottle back to his lips. He drinks. The burning is nothing new. He drinks. His lungs are still working as they should. He drinks.

When the bottle is empty, it does not feel like a victory. There is always something worse coming. And now he feels nauseous, but he knows how to stomp down on that feeling. They always made him clean up his messes.

With shaking hands, Tony holds out the bottle for Rhodey to take, wondering how much there will be the next time, whether he will be able to do well again. He holds the bottle and he sees Rhodey’s hand coming to take it. It is nowhere near close his chest, too slow to be a punch. Yet Tony throws the bottle away from him and makes himself as small as possible, feeling phantom hands picking at his skin, peeling it away from his bones.

He whimpers and does nothing to hold it back. His heart might be the first thing he lost in that cave, but his pride followed soon after.

“I’m here, Tones. Nobody is going to hurt you,” Rhodey says, repeating words and staying calm like Tony is not broken before him. Like there is something to save here. “Nobody is going to touch you. You’re safe.”

Tony does not believe him. He stares over Rhodey’s shoulder at Yinsen, silently begging for the truth. Rhodey does not stop talking, though, and soon that is everything Tony hears. A litany of lies pulling him under.

His mind grows foggy and he does not fight it. He has not slept much over the past months, but he has spent a lot of time unconscious. Both can be a refuge if he just wants to escape himself.

So when the world goes black, Tony gladly lets it take him with it.

* * *

When Tony wakes up again, he feels strangely at home inside his own body. Everything aches. He is short of breath and weak enough that he does not stop trembling. His chest feels raw, at the same time compressed and empty. His heart is beating. Yinsen is nowhere to be seen.

Looking down at himself, he is wrapped in white gauze that is unbearably soft to the touch. He should know better by now, but he undoes the bandages around his chest. The blue of the arc reactor greets him, almost an old friend by now, even though it will forever be proof of what he is lacking.

At the side of his bed, Rhodey is slumped over in a chair. He looks worn, tired, as if he has spent the entire time Tony has been missing wandering through the desert, looking for him. Tony is not sure how long it has been. It feels like a lifetime. The man who entered that cave certainly is not the same one who blasted his way out of it.

He shifts in the bed, needing to catalogue the damage. That has become second nature over his time in the cave. He usually passed out during the – sessions with his hosts. He could never know how much of him was left when he woke up again.

Now, he feels almost whole. An IV line connects him to a pump that surely contains pain medication. He cannot explain the softness of the pain otherwise, or the lull of his thoughts. He wishes they would not have bothered with it. The pain might have been bad, but it usually makes it impossible for him to entirely forget himself.

“Tones,” Rhodey mutters, waking up first slowly then all at once. Tony’s movements must have disturbed him. “How are you feeling?”

He sounds wary, almost like he expects Tony to lash out at him or to run away. Tony is not sure what happened. He remembers their last hours in the cave. The assembling of the armour. Yinsen running off. Fire and gunshots. Yinsen dying. Burning.

There are more glimpses. A helicopter appearing in the sky. Relief and fear. More burning. Panic.

Tony would like to say that he was not himself. He is afraid that _was_ him, though. A not inconsequential part of him, kicked loose by months of torture and realizing that he is not the man he thought he is.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Tony says. He is not sure what he means. The broken man stumbling out of the cave. The insanity. The ungratefulness. The wounds.

“Don’t,” Rhodey replies softly. He looks like he wants to reach out, to pull Tony into his arms like they have done a thousand times at MIT. He remains where he is, however, motionless and obvious about it. “You weren’t yourself. Some of your wounds were infected. You had a fever and were severely dehydrated.”

Delirium then. All right. If that is what they want to go with. Tony thinks he has simply gone insane. He expects Yinsen to show up any moment now to agree with him. He does not.

“You came for me,” Tony says, changing the topic. He cannot make sense of his mind himself, so it would be unfair to burden Rhodey with it.

“Of course.” Rhodey sounds choked, almost like he is going to cry. “Never stopped looking.”

What Tony actually wanted to know was _why_. Why go to so much effort for him? Why scout the endless expanse of the desert? Why not give up and keep living his life? 

“You shouldn’t have,” Tony mutters, but he is not quiet enough to avoid that Rhodey hears him. Uncomfortable truths have not been taboo in the cave between Yinsen and him. It will take some time to get used to them again. Time he does not have.

“Tones –” Rhodey warns.

Tony aches at hearing that name. It sounds like Rhodey is calling out for someone who is not there, someone who might have never existed at all.

“I need to get back,” Tony interrupts, his voice firmer than he would have thought himself capable of. Somewhere in his bones is some strength left, no matter that the Ten Rings tried to beat it all out of him.

“You need to rest,” Rhodey says, stern as if he has not lost a thousand arguments against Tony along these same lines. “You need time to heal.”

“I need to go –” _home_. The word refuses to slip over his tongue. “To America. They had my weapons.”

“And we will look into that.” Rhodey is not going to give up easily.

Unbeknownst to him, Tony just had a few months of bringing his stubbornness up to par. He can say no as long as he has to. Even before that, he has been bad at stopping anything for his own sake.

“I want the first flight back,” he insists, not looking away from Rhodey.

“You’ve just spent four days unconscious. And three months in captivity before that,” Rhodey argues, getting agitated over nothing. Tony will be fine. He always is. This time, he will even try to be better. “You can’t just –”

“Tomorrow,” Tony decrees and leans back into the cushions of the bed. “I’ll rest until tomorrow. And then I need to go back.”

Rhodey opens his mouth, ready to protest. Then surprisingly, he backs down. He puts his hand on the mattress, inching it forward without attempting to touch Tony. Tony remembers yelling something about _no touching_. While he cannot feel guilty about that, he can put Rhodey’s worries to rest now.

Tony puts his hand on Rhodey’s, feels the exhale of relief as well as the lessening tension of muscles. Almost every touch he has had for the past months brought new pain with it. This, however, whispers only of home.

“I thought I had lost you,” Rhodey says quietly. It breaks what is left of Tony’s heart.

“I’m here,” Tony promises.

At that moment, he decides he will do his best to make that true. He will not leave a part of himself in that cave, will not give in to the insanity still tugging at his mind.

_Don’t waste your life_, Yinsen’s voice echoes in Tony’s ear even though he is nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tony answers both of them.

He squeezes Rhodey’s hand. He will not give up that easily. There is still work to be done and a family to come home to.

**Author's Note:**

> It was actually fun to write Tony bordering on losing his insanity.  
That said, delirium is one of the most fascinating things ever. It changes people within minute, turns them wild or into a sobbing mess, makes them see things that are not there. And then, when it's treated right, they are back to normal as if nothing happened. Our brains are great as long as they work!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
